Alexander (Shura) Pavlovich Chekalin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Па́влович Чека́лин; March 25, 1925 – November 6, 1941), was a Russian teenager, Soviet partisan, and Hero of the Soviet Union.
Russian is an East Slavic language, which is official in the Russian Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as being widely used throughout Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, the Caucasus and Central Asia. It was the de facto language of the Soviet Union until its dissolution on 25 December 1991. Although, nowadays, nearly three decades after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russian is used in official capacity or in public life in all the post-Soviet nation-states, as well as in Israel and Mongolia, the rise of state-specific varieties of this language tends to be strongly denied in Russia, in line with the Russian World ideology.
The title Hero of the Soviet Union was the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, awarded personally or collectively for heroic feats in service to the Soviet state and society.
Tula Oblast is a federal subject of Russia. It is geographically in the European Russia region of the country and is part of the Central Federal District, covering an area of 25,700 square kilometers (9,900 sq mi) and a population of 1,553,925 (2010).
Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia, with 13.2 million residents within the city limits, 17 million within the urban area and 20 million within the metropolitan area. Moscow is one of Russia's federal cities.
Biography
Chekalin's deed is shown on a Soviet stamp issued in 1942
Sixteen-year-old Shura Chekalin engaged in underground resistance activities in the region of Tula near Moscow. In the first days of November 1941, he took part in an ambush of German vehicles, destroying one vehicle with a hand-grenade. After becoming ill, Chekalin was bedridden, and his location was betrayed to the Germans by an unknown informant. When Germans approached to arrest him, he threw a hand grenade at them, but it failed to explode. He was brutally tortured, and hanged on November 6, 1941. His body was left hanging for twenty days, taken down only after the area had been retaken by the Red Army.
Resistance movements during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation, disinformation and propaganda, to hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns. In many countries, resistance movements were sometimes also referred to as The Underground.
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, frequently shortened to Red Army was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and, after 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution. The Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. Beginning in February 1946, the Red Army, along with the Soviet Navy, embodied the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces; taking the official name of "Soviet Army", until its dissolution in December 1991.
Chekalin, formerly known as Likhvin (Лихвин), is a town in Suvorovsky District of Tula Oblast, Russia, located on the left bank of the Oka River. Population: 994 (2010 Census); 1,151 (2002 Census); 1,319 (1989 Census). In 2010 it was the least populous inhabited locality in Russia with the town status; now the smallest town in Russia is Innopolis with 96 inhabitants by 2016 Census.
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